


Following Orders

by skaerdir



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I hope I tagged this right it’s my first time posting, Order 66, this is like... the first fanfic i’ve ever written lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 08:14:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16280885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaerdir/pseuds/skaerdir
Summary: Perrod was a Republic Intelligence agent before the Order; he had no reason to question it. He’d always been wary of the Jedi anyways.





	Following Orders

**Author's Note:**

> This is like the first fanfic I ever made with actual intent to share with other people. Perrod thinks as long as he’s following orders he’s doing the right thing but uh. He’s wrong.

Sheets of rain poured down over Coruscant’s lower open-air district. Few beings were in the streets, and the ones that were hunched their shoulders against the downpour and hurried on their ways. Perrod paused under the overhang of a dingy pawn shop to squint ahead at their target. The cantina’s door was closed, but its neon sign was flickering and lights blazed from within. Perrod motioned to Captain Taig to move his men into position. Taig’s voice crackled a confirmation into the hidden comm in Perrod’s ear, barely audible over the drumming of the rain. The five troopers moved stealthily in the alleyways behind the buildings, stopping just short of the cantina’s windows. Perrod waited for Taig’s go-ahead, then walked out into the rain, heading for the cantina. He didn’t have armor to protect him from the weather, dressed instead in nondescript civilian clothing, but he paid no mind to the damp. The downpour was a perfect cover for the clones to sneak through the streets—if anyone saw them and started acting erratically, it could alert their target. 

By this time, seven months after the initiation of Order 66, the Jedi threat had been reduced to the point that it was deemed safe to prioritize attempting capture over killing on sight. This would be the fourth Jedi Perrod had been assigned to take in. He had been able to arrest two previously—one tried to run and did not survive his escape attempt. It would be Perrod’s second time working with Captain Taig and the rest of Tropic Squad. The troopers had always performed admirably, and Perrod was glad to be assigned to them again. It would make the work easier.

Pushing through the door of the cantina, he noted the few patrons sitting around the main room. The target wasn’t here, but he saw several closed doors leading to smaller rooms. It matched up with the layout of the building he’d studied before the mission. If their informant was correct, a man staying in one of the guest rooms at this cantina had been seen with a lightsaber at his hip. Perrod wasn’t sure who exactly had given Intelligence the information, but it didn’t matter. Plenty of beings were willing to inform on the Jedi. The Republic—the Empire now, Perrod reminded himself—paid such beings well. He made his way to the second door from the left, inserted his duplicate key, and slipped inside, closing the door behind him, in one smooth motion. 

An Ishi Tib spun around from where he had been bent over the bed, leaving a half-packed suitcase behind him. Perrod drew his vibroblade. “Put down your weapons and surrender. You won’t be harmed.” In response, the Ishi Tib ignited a blue lightsaber, his expression hard. He was the target, then. “Captain. Backup,” he said into his comm. There was no need for stealth anymore. The troopers would be rushing through the door in only a minute or so, but Perrod would have to hold off the Jedi for that long. He made sure he was squarely between the Jedi and the exit of the room. There was another door, but the floorplans had shown it as a large storage closet. There would be no escape that way. 

With a lightsaber, the Jedi had the clear upper hand. Perrod’s vibroknife was plated in cortosis, but it would take great luck and greater skill to block blows from the larger weapon. However, instead of pressing the attack, the Jedi moved in the direction of the closet door and struck a defensive stance. Could he be trying to hide something? Perrod made a note of it to be investigated after the Jedi’s capture. The Jedi struck at him in a large, slow loop, clearly intending to scare him off. Stepping to the side, Perrod turned the blade away with the side of his vibroblade. The Jedi swung again, with more deadly intent this time, and Perrod managed to catch the blow on his blade, using the flat of his offhand against the knife’s spine to push the Jedi stumbling back towards the wall. How best to press the advantage? he considered, and then the door behind him rattled and Taig, Gel, and Thruster burst in, blasters drawn. 

There were now four people facing off against the Jedi, but only one of them had a way to block a lightsaber, and the small room was cramped with their bodies, making movement awkward. The Jedi sliced out at Gel. Perrod had seen the same maneuver before, during the Clone War, where it had always been to disable the opponent’s blaster. But now, whether intentionally or because of the close quarters, the strike took Gel’s arm off at the elbow. As the Jedi extended his arms for the swing, Taig blasted him with a stunner, and he fell. 

The moment the threat was removed, Perrod dropped to Gel’s side. His breathing was shaky and his pulse fast, but the lightsaber wound was, of course, cauterized, and he would make it to the medbay back at the base. Perrod straightened up as Blast and Slink rushed in from where they’d been standing, guarding the door, and began to pick Gel up. Thruster opened his mouth to say something, but Perrod hushed him silently and indicated the back room. He moved to open the door, and Taig and Thruster backed him up.

It was a fairly large storage closet, more than half the size of the main apartment. There were a few large boxes stacked up on it, and one open on straight ahead of Perrod. He stepped into the room, then to the side to allow Taig and Thruster entry through the narrow doorway. As he entered the room, Taig stumbled back suddenly into Thruster, as if pushed by some invisible force, and a young Ithorian leapt out of the box towards him, igniting a green lightsaber. Perrod shot instinctively, and only later thought to bless the fact that he’d set his blaster to stun before the mission. The Padawan slumped to the floor, their lightsaber fizzling out before it could cleave through Taig’s chestplate. Leaning down, Perrod grabbed Taig’s outstretched hand and pulled him to his feet. 

On the shuttle back to the base, a memory rose unbidden to the surface of Perrod’s mind. Another Padawan, two of them in fact, in a box. 15 and 17 standard years old. Laughing and pretending the box was a fighter and that they were soaring through the stars. Children.

Perrod almost glanced behind him towards the holding cell at the back of the shuttle, but he turned his gaze forward instead.


End file.
